§ 417. The grades of this elevation of certainty to truth are three in number: first (_a_) consciousness in general, with an object set against it; (_b_) self-consciousness, for which _ego_ is the object; (_c_) unity of consciousness and self-consciousness, where the mind sees itself embodied in the object and sees itself as implicitly and explicitly determinate, as Reason, the _notion_ of mind. (a) Consciousness Proper(127). (α) Sensuous consciousness. § 418. Consciousness is, first, _immediate_ consciousness, and its reference to the object accordingly the simple and underived certainty of it. The object similarly, being immediate, an existent, reflected in itself, is further characterised as immediately singular. This is sense-consciousness. Consciousness—as a case of correlation—comprises only the categories belonging to the abstract ego or formal thinking; and these it treats as features of the object (§ 415). Sense-consciousness therefore is aware of the object as an existent, a something, an existing thing, a singular, and so on. It appears as wealthiest in matter, but as poorest in thought. That wealth of matter is made out of sensations: they are the _material_ of consciousness (§ 414), the substantial and qualitative, what the soul in its anthropological sphere is and finds _in itself_. This material the ego (the reflection of the soul in itself) separates from itself, and puts it first under the category of being. Spatial and temporal Singularness, _here_ and _now_ (the terms by which in the Phenomenology of the Mind (W. II. p. 73), I described the object of sense-consciousness) strictly belongs to _intuition_. At present the object is at first to be viewed only in its correlation to _consciousness_, i.e. a something _external_ to it, and not yet as external on its own part, or as being beside and out of itself. § 419. The _sensible_ as somewhat becomes an _other_: the reflection in itself of this _somewhat_, the _thing_, has _many_ properties; and as a single (thing) in its immediacy has several _predicates_. The muchness of the sense-singular thus becomes a breadth—a variety of relations, reflectional attributes, and universalities. These are logical terms introduced by the thinking principle, i.e. in this case by the Ego, to describe the sensible. But the Ego as itself apparent sees in all this characterisation a change in the object; and self-consciousness, so construing the object, is sense-perception. (β) Sense-perception(128). § 420. Consciousness, having passed beyond the sensibility, wants to take the object in its truth, not as merely immediate, but as mediated, reflected in itself, and universal. Such an object is a combination of sense qualities with attributes of wider range by which thought defines concrete relations and connexions. Hence the identity of consciousness with the object passes from the abstract identity of “I am sure” to the definite identity of “I know, and am aware.”